Rosewater Donut

Toolis Jewelry has included my Rosewater Donut in her treasury, "Fresh and Dreamy", on Etsy. Please visit and leave a comment! Commenting pushes the treasury up. Thanks!

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=95079

Bathroom Sink Butterfly

What a morning I've had! When I saw these butterfly charms on Etsy, I knew I had to have them to go with this butterfly pendant. I have the day off, and I finally got the charms in the mail, so I decided to make up the necklace.

The first thing that happened was that I got up to take a break, and stepped on one of my bead boxes. It flipped over, flew open, and thousands of tiny silver beads and crimps went all over the carpet. Of course I had to choose THAT box to step on.

Then I thought I had finished the necklace, but when I put it on and looked in the mirror, I decided it needed changes. Back to the jewelry design center. Back upstairs to the mirror. "Well, that butterfly charm in the front isn't laying right." I laid the necklace down on the bathroom sink, and the pendant pulled it INTO the sink. I had the drain plug out because it won't stay up. Down the drain the necklace goes, stopped only by the pendant. But when I went to pull it out, it was STUCK. A little tugging loosened some of it. More insistant tugging and I could feel something break on the necklace. Down on my knees to the cabinet under the sink. Out come all the bottles (well, at least I got my bathroom cabinet cleaned out of some stuff I didn't even know was there.) The only solution was to unscrew the pipe elbow. I turned one and it turned easily, thank goodness. Took the pipe apart, stood up, took the pendant off the necklace, and pulled the necklace back down thru the drain. Back to the design center to put the necklace back together.

I guess this is why I don't sell jewelry. NO ONE would believe what goes into it. This was about a 6 hour piece! Maybe Mercury is in retrograde????

Challenge Pendants

There is a challenge going on right now on the Art Bead Scene blog. The challenge is to use some colors in a chip that looks like a paint chip. The colors are turquoise, red violet, gold and yellow. I found it very difficult. I would never choose to put those colors together. I have a large bottle of a red-violet glaze that I have hardly ever used. But that's the beauty of a challenge. Here are two pendants I came up with, and I am surprised that I like them.

Now to make the jewelry.

New Face Designs

I had a customer on Etsy buy one of my face pendants. She emailed me that she really likes it and asked for more. I had a few in the bisque stage, so I glazed them. I did a couple of donuts in a soft color scheme of mint, pink and brown. I also like the way the victorian/japanese ladies heads turned out.

Paper Clay

I got my paper clay experiments out of the kiln. Even the firmer clay that I had mixed the pulp into, that kind of had chunks of paper in it, turned out good. It's amazing what a little paper mixed in did to the pieces. They really feel lighter. This is great for earrings, most people don't want heavy earrings. It's worth the little extra effort to mix the paper in. I'll be doing more.

I opened up the Sunday paper yesterday to find an article in the travel section about the Valley of Fire park. What a coincidence, since I had just blogged about it. The Indian drawings are petroglyphs, (not hieroglyphs, those are Egyptian) and were made by the Anasazis around 1150AD! There have been people in the park for around 4,000 years. The park is 42,000 acres and is Nevada's oldest state park. I would recommend the trip out to anyone visiting Vegas. Spring and fall are the best times to go, the winters can be cold and everyone knows about temps in the desert in summer.

AND, my pond has partially thawed, all my fish are doin' good! And the crocuses popped up yesterday, the daffodils have green shoots pushing up! Welcome spring!

Dragonfly Chain Necklace

Here is a 22" long necklace, with 6" dangle. I split gunmetal chain and added beaded dragonfly charms. The 2" pendant I created with 2 holes, so the chain goes through the 2nd, larger hole in a lariat style. The flower is Hill Tribe silver, the dangles are glass, pewter and silver.

Why Do I Make Art?

I have been reading almost all of the the PD James novels, and in several of them she mentions time, and how virtually all of our lives are in the past. No sooner do we say the word "second" then the second is gone. I've been pondering this observation and found it disconcerting. I've heard of "living in the now" and "there is nothing but the present moment", but this is a different way of seeing it, like everything is gone before it can even be grasped.
I started thinking about making art and why I like doing it, and how it relates to the temporal nature of things. Making art is a kind of record of living. It's something that I make in the present moment, but it doesn't slip into the past. It carries on into the future, and will probably even live beyond me. Most of our records of ancient civilizations come from pieces of art that they have left behind.
A few summers ago I went to Las Vegas and rather than spend the time in the casinos burning money, I decided to take a trip to see one of the local wonders. This place was called The Valley of Fire and it's a state park. It is a fabulous place in the desert with huge stone formations that look like giant wailing faces, formed by sand, wind and time. When the sun gets down low enough, it sets the stones on fire, glowing red like they have been heated in a kiln. In one place a staircase has been erected to the top of one of the stones, and there are some hieroglyphics there, left by an ancient race. Up on that rock, there is a small piece of art left behind, to show that someone was there, though all other traces are long gone. Much to my dismay some modern "artists" left a few drawings there too. Maybe this was their way of saying "you were here, and I was here too". "How did the Indian artist get to the top of the stone?" we are left to wonder, and ponder, who this person was, and how he lived. What motivated him or her to find a way to the top of the stone, and leave a drawing there?
This is part of the pull of art for human kind. I remember reading somewhere, awhile back, about a quilter from colonial times that said something like "I've always had the name of being a good housekeeper, but when I'm gone, no one will remember the floors I've swept and scrubbed or the tables I've dusted. But this here quilt, this here quilt, will be something to remember me by."